JOY RIDDERHOF

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

Agricultural Scientist and Inventor

In 1860, night raiders rode into a farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, and stole a slave woman and her baby, hoping to make a profit reselling them in the south. Moses Carver, who had bought the young woman as a companion for his wife, offered one of his prize racehorses for their safe return. A bounty hunter took up the chase but returned with only the sickly baby. Moses Carver gave him the racehorse anyway.

Little George, as he was called, and his older brother, Jim, were raised by Moses Carver and his wife as foster sons. Too frail for heavy farm work, George developed a deep love for God’s created world. He also had a boundless curiosity: Why did flowers grow here and not there? What else could you do with sweet potatoes besides eat them? Why did some crops seem to wear out the soil they were planted in? All growing things seemed to have secrets locked inside—and George was determined to find the key.

But first he had to learn to read. The local school would not enroll “colored” children, but George was determined. At fourteen years of age, he left home, intent on getting an education wherever he could find it. He worked odd jobs in towns all over Missouri and Kansas, going to school wherever they would let him in. His first “textbook” was a Bible, and he developed a habit of daily Bible reading that gave him direction and strength the rest of his life.

When he had learned all a teacher had to teach, he moved on, supporting himself by learning to cook and taking in laundry. Early on he developed a philosophy that so much work was worth so much pay, and he would not take charity.

At the encouragement of some white friends, Carver applied to Highland College in Kansas. His heart filled with joy when he received an acceptance letter. But when he showed up on campus and presented his letter of acceptance, the dean frowned. “You didn’t tell us you were a Negro. Highland College doesn’t take Negroes.”

Carver was devastated. There was so much more to learn! He walked away, discouraged by racism that looked at a man’s skin color rather than his heart and mind.

But Carver did not cease to learn. He taught himself to paint pictures and play the accordion. In 1888, he gathered his courage once more and applied to Simpson College in Iowa—only the second black person in the college’s history. He loved art, and astounded many with his beautiful paintings of flowers. But at his art teacher’s urging, he transferred to the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Ames, Iowa, to study horticulture, eventually earning a master’s degree in agriculture and bacterial botany.

Iowa State wanted George Carver to stay and teach, but he was restless. What was God’s purpose for his life? God had given him so much; how could he “give back what he’d been given” to help his own people? The answer came in a letter from Booker T. Washington, a prominent black educator, who wanted him to head up the new Agriculture Department at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. George Carver packed his bags.

He arrived on Tuskegee’s campus on October 8, 1896, and began with thirteen students in his two-year program. By spring of the following year, he had seventy-six students! That same spring of 1897, the Tuskegee Experiment Station was established on campus. Carver and his students experimented with ways to conserve the soil, introduce new crops to help break the stranglehold of “King Cotton”), ways to be more self-sufficient, and developing new uses for farm crops to help create a bigger market. The results were published in a bulletin and distributed to surrounding counties—but what about the farmers who couldn’t read?

Carver believed that “demonstration” was the purest form of teaching. People needed to see and touch. He developed two strategies to help local farmers: One was a monthly “Farmers’ Institute” on the campus of Tuskegee, where farmers could come and see the various farm experiments, ask questions, and discuss their problems. The second strategy was a “traveling school” on weekends. Carver and an assistant would load up a farm wagon with samples and demonstration materials, and travel the back roads of Alabama to reach the poorest farmers with practical ways to improve their farms, their families, their lives.

By the time the sun rose each day, Carver was already out walking in the woods for prayer. His favorite Bible verse was Psalm 121:1-2: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.” The students recognized the source of his wisdom and asked him to lead a weekly Bible study, which by 1911 was attended by a hundred students.

Carver was a demanding teacher. “Don’t tell me it’s about right,” he’d say to a student who had just given him an inexact answer. “About right might as well be wrong.” And then he’d say, “If you come to a stream that’s five feet wide, and you jump four and a half feet, well, that’s about right. But you might as well just topple in at the near bank and save yourself the effort.”

Around the turn of the century, there was a lot of controversy about what kind of education and social efforts would most advance the black race in America. On one hand, W. E. B. DuBois believed that blacks should demand their full rights as citizens, including the right to vote and a classical higher education emphasizing literature, languages, and the arts. On the other hand, Booker T. Washington counseled patience and courtesy in those demands, concentrating on vocational training so that blacks could be self-supporting, becoming businessmen and property owners, a philosophy of “conciliation” he thought would earn respect and eventually full civil rights.

George Washington Carver refused to get involved in controversy about race or else he would have no time left for his work. But his improvements in agriculture were gradually noticed by other institutions and government officials who asked him to lecture or give demonstrations. These invitations were bittersweet; as a Negro man, he was often treated as a second-class citizen, then given high praise as a scientist. But Carver believed that self-pity was a destructive force. He accepted in silence the personal injustices that came his way because he knew that to dwell upon them in his mind would drain him of energy he believed might be put to better use.

But he occasionally had a sharp word of insight for any willing to listen. “Your actions speak so loud I cannot hear what you are saying. You have too much religion and not enough Christianity—too many creeds and not enough performance. This world is perishing for kindness.” Another time, explaining why a white person said something hurtful, he said, “[S]he . . . was afflicted with a feeling of being inferior, which forced her to dominate somebody to prove she was superior.”

During his lifetime, George Carver dedicated his knowledge of science to helping the common man make a living. He developed two hundred new products from the peanut, and 118 practical products from the sweet potato, creating new markets and expanding the number of commercial crops. In so doing, he broke King Cotton’s grip on the South, renewing the tired soil and benefiting whites and blacks alike.

A brilliant man, George Carver remained humble in spirit and always gave glory to God for his achievements. When he died in 1943, his epitaph read: He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in helping the world.